Vango Book 2: A Prince Without a Kingdom by Timothee de Fombelle, translated by Sarah Ardizzone

Vango

Book 2: A Prince Without a Kingdom

Timothee de Fombelle

Translated by Sarah Ardizzone (French)

First published 2014, I read 2015

443 pages, adventure, young adult

Many thanks to Walker Books UK for providing a review copy of this book!

This is the second volume in a 2-volume work (you can read my review of the first volume here). I’m not sure how I feel about a 2-volume story; it almost seems like the author should have published it in one volume. I suppose that would have made it over 800 pages, which may have seemed too big for a YA book (not that that stopped Harry Potter!).

At the end of the last volume, Vango had discovered the treasure that had been stolen from his parents on the night he had washed ashore as a child, and had learned the identity of the man who had killed his parents. He had not, however, found out the identity of his parents. Meanwhile, Father Zefiro had run off to protect his monastery by killing an infamous arms dealer who is a master of disguise. 

Now, in this volume, Vango is out for revenge on the man who killed his parents. He also wants to interrogate the murderer, to find out who he actually is. Leaving Ethel again, Vango has gone to America in the attempt to trace the murderer down. He runs into Zefiro and helps him stalk the arms dealer, who may have some connection with Vango's own search. But are either of these men meant to accomplish the revenge that they have set out to do?

Vango Book One: Between Sky and Earth by Timothée de Fombelle, translated by Sarah Ardizzone

Vango
Book One: Between Sky and Earth
Timothée de Fombelle
Translated by Sarah Ardizzone (from French)
Originally 2010, I read Walker Books 2014
429 pages, young adult, adventure

Many thanks to Walker Books UK for providing a review copy of this book. 

Moments from completing his ordination to become a priest, Vango Romano finds himself fleeing from the Paris police. Climbing up the side of Notre Dame, he just manages to dodge the bullets that threaten his life - and escapes into the rooftops of Paris under the shadow of the Graf Zeppelin. This is not the first incident when the innocent Vango has had to flee for his life; it only confirms Vango's fears (perhaps even paranoia) that he is being watched - and that someone wishes him dead.

Racing from shelter to shelter, all the events of Vango's strange life come back to haunt him. He stows away on a zeppelin, flees to the remote Mediterranean island where he grew up, travels incognito in France, perches on the roofs of Paris - and meets up with Ethel, a fast-driving Scottish heiress and his old flame.

Meanwhile, in Soviet Russia a man whose daughter thinks he is a gardener orders Vango's execution.

A beautifully inventive adventure novel, this story reminds me of nothing more than the unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo - but set in the 1900s and meant to be read by a younger audience. This is, by the way, the highest praise I can give to an adventure novel - The Count of Monte Cristo has been one of my favorite novels for about a decade. Vango has the same ingenuity, the same imagination, as Alexander Dumas's work, with a never-ending series of fantastic events that the incredibly talented main character negotiates with aplomb.

This doesn't mean that the book is emotionally shallow. On the contrary, again much like Alexander Dumas, de Fombelle seeds his work with strong emotional backing. The characters are never two-dimensional, and even relatively minor characters have motivations and interests that make their actions realistic. This includes the depiction of children; Stalin's daughter, for example, does not know who or what her father is, but she is still afraid of what he does. She has noticed that several members of her family have disappeared, and she misses the happy times before her mother died. It is de Fombelle's adept characterization that solidifies the real, poignant emotional underpinning of what might otherwise be a fluffy adventure novel.

The only real negative about this book is that it seemed too long at times - though you have a suspicion about Vango's origins, the answer is never revealed in the 429 pages of this first book. The beginning of the novel is quick and engaging, but the ending drags a bit - just to put off revealing Vango's real name. I don't know if younger readers would be bothered by this deliberate slowness; perhaps the problem lies more with my jaded reading (and *cough* knowledge of Russian history *cough*) than with the book itself.

This is a two-part series, and I am very excited to start the second book. Although brilliantly written, Between Sky and Earth gets annoying toward the end if seen as a stand-alone novel. That being said, I highly recommend this book for all young adults, either in age or at heart. Anyone who loves a brilliantly imagined adventure tale will enjoy this book.

Vango: Between Sky and Earth can be found in the US at Amazon and Indiebound, in the UK at Amazon and Hive, in India at Amazon and flipkart, and anywhere in the world at wordery. 

Further Reading: 

Complete ebook of The Count of Monte Cristo from Project Gutenburg

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Zone by Mathias Enard, translated by Charlotte Mandell

Zone
Mathias Enard
Translated by Charlotte Mandell (from French)
2014, I read ebook version
528 pages, reflection on war, internal monologue

Francis Servain Mirkovic is taking a train from Milan to Rome with only a suitcase - a suitcase filled with sensitive information from his 15 years working for the French Intelligence Service with a specialization on the Mediterranean basin, especially the war-torn regions of Northern Africa and the Middle East, where he travelled extensively to meet with contacts from all sides of the conflicts; he is traveling to Rome to finally hand off that information to a representative of the Vatican, which will allow him to escape from the chaos of his "Zone" as his area of specialization is called in the business, although it won't allow him to go home; although he was born and raised in France, he is of Croatian origin, and by joining the Croatian army during the Balkan Wars, he identified with his ethnic origin, although now he has little connection with the new states formed after that war, so he has fallen into the abyss of truly not belonging anywhere but having ties, information, and interests everywhere; hopefully the woman he hopes is still waiting for him in Rome will be happy to see him, and will accept the change of his name, taken from a man from his neighborhood in Paris who has been in a psychiatric hospital for many years, and maybe they will even be able to run away together and he will escape his past once and for all and become a truly new person with no Zone and no need to remember the atrocities committed there, but now while he's on this train he must find a way to while away the time; he brought a novel along, which is set in his Zone, recommended by a woman in a bookshop who couldn't know about him could she?

Enard uses this intense, impelling prose to describe Francis's inner monologue during the entirety of his train journey. The result is a meditative investigation of war, violence, and what it does to a person when he or she gets involved, either directly or through research.